I heard a traffic report on the radio, while I was driving to work this morning, in which it was announced that a stoplight in nearby Marysville was malcycling, causing a backup on city streets. To my prescriptivist shame, I knew what the reporter meant.
Is a brilliant coinage, imo. I'd never heard it before and instantly understood it, and recognised that no other single word exists for describing the process so precisely. Bravissimo/a to its originator.
Good of you to own up, Padre.
I like it too -- analagous to
malfunctioning.
The use of novel words in speech
Does not merit criticism
Because one man's apparent breach
Is another's witicism.
All words were coinages at first:
The apt ones and the terrible.
The good are good; the worse are worst.
The latter are unbearable.
When the light unexpectedly changes in your favor, it must be benecycling.
OK. I'm gonna be a nitpicker here. Is there a difference between malfunctioning and nonfunctioning? Similarly, is there a difference between malcycling and noncycling?
To me, malfunctioning means it's working but it's not working correctly. Noncycling means it's totally dead. And a noncycling traffic light is IN THEORY better than a malfunctioning one, since the former is supposed to be treated as a four way stop sign.
But a malcycling traffic light could well be one that is randomly flashing red, amber, and green so it would be possible to have green in all directions at one time, which would, of course be much worse than a light that was not working at all. And while I, like Father Steve, had an immediate grasp of what was going on, now I'm not so certain that this particular coinage is at all helpful.
If a light is not working at all the broadcast traffic report could and should say, "The traffic signal at Walk and Dontwalk is completely out so all of you know that you need to treat that intersection as a four-way stop. Come to a complete stop and proceed carefully when it's certain you can do so without having an accident."
But if the light is malcycling in some other way, the warning should be entirely different: "Goodness folks, listen to this one closely. The traffic signal at Walk and Dontwalk has gone bananas. Sometimes it's red in all directions, sometimes it's green in all directions. Avoid that intersection if you can but if you can't be extremely careful."
Up to now, I thought malcycling was the privilege of cyclists : they tend to view traffic ligths as an optional affair.
I would interpret malcycling as the timing being off on the lights.
As and example, I've been stopped at a light where the green light on one branch of the intersection is green for just a second or so, not enough time for a car to get through intersection, before it turns red again.
And just recently, near my home, the lights were cycling through green, yellow and red so quickly, a huge jam was created because people didn't know whose turn it was.